Little Miss Marker. Alexander Hall. 1934.

Shirley Temple!

Hm… Oh, right, I bought a box set of screwball comedies. I’ve seen surprisingly few Shirley Temple movies, so I’m excited now. I’ve seen, like… Wizard of Oz? Oh, that’s Judy Garland!

I love they way everybody talks, see!? They’re all gangsters, see!? Tack on your heels and walk!

Oh, wow. This is a really, really disturbing movie. The concept is that a gambler pawns his daughter to make a bet on some horses. The bookie refuses all other “markers” (i.e., IOUs), but he takes a look at Shirley Temple and gives the guy $20.

Now you’re going to say “ah, but those were different, naive times”, but then there’s the scene where a kid asks her whether her father had forgotten her other places:

So, not, they really weren’t.

But if you manage to pretend to ignore that subtext, this is a really sprightly movie. It zips along; the plot getting zanier all the time and the actors talking faster and faster. The zingers keep coming.

It’s kinda irresistible and Shirley Temple is the dimpliest kid ever and the two mooks baby-sitting her er beyond perfect.

CGI hair still isn’t perfect.

Aquaman. James Wan. 2018.

I’ve never quite understood the obsession super-hero movie filmmakers have with origin stories. The fun thing with super-heroes is watching the super-heroes do super-heroics. With origin stories, you postpone the fun until, like, one third into the movie. And it makes even less sense when they’re rebooting franchises, and audiences are supposed to suffer through yet another variation of a story they’ve seen before.

At least this movie doesn’t have that problem: Nobody has tried to make an Aquaman movie before.

Once it gets going (and it takes less time than most super-hero movies) it’s pretty fun. The main problem is the damn underwater CGI hair: It’s amazingly distracting. The actors’ own hair is pretty much slicked and tied down, but then there’s this crown of tendrils writhing and waving in the water is the most absurd fashion. It’s like they had too much CPU power available and animated each individual strand with its own motion engine.

At one point I started to wonder whether some of these actors were also CGI because the hair just makes everything seem so artificial.

It’s a fun movie with charming actors (the Aquaman/Mera dynamic is great) and lovely CGI (except the hair). The plot is a bit meh, but better than most super-hero movies.

The Sixth Sense. M. Night Shyamalan. 1999.

Yeah yeah yeah, I can see old movies.

In some ways it’s chill watching a twist movie that’s so well-known that I already know what the twist is. You can just sit back and relax and enjoy the chills. On the other hand, large parts of the movie turns rather tedious.

Shyamalan is great with the jump scares, but I think the actors aren’t particularly good. The whining from the kid is annoying and Bruce Willis is going through this movie as if he’s constantly slightly drunk. I know the detachment has a function in the movie, but it’s a turn-off.

And no matter how annoying the kid is, it’s not very convincing the way even the adults are unnerved by him and lash out. And how many times did Willis rewind to the “it’s cold in here” part of that tape? And and.

I’m disappointed that the mother didn’t hire a ghostbusters van at the end.

I’m totally open to the idea that this movie was brilliant in 1999.